MAP07: The Beating Heart (Heartland)

MAP07: The Beating Heart is the seventh map of Heartland. It was designed by Paul DeBruyne (skillsaw) and uses the music track "Souls Symphony" by Stuart Rynn (stewboy). The par time defined in MAPINFO is 35:00.

Essentials
You begin in an elevator that is descending to a castle. The castle gates require your backpack (which will remove all ammo and the ammo capacity upgrade) and all weapons except for the fireaxe to be placed on pedestals to be opened. Then you must fight waves of demons, imps, Hell knights, cacodemons, and mancubi. After surviving through those waves, you will obtain the rocket launcher, submachine gun, and shotgun. After fighting more waves of monsters, you will obtain all of your weapons again.

Following, you will have to battle against the final boss, a giant heart. The heart will summon four waves of varied monsters, after each wave you can deal damage to the heart. Once the heart explodes and its sprite disappears, the level ends.

Other points of interest
When pistol starting this level, the castle gates do not require any weapons to proceed.

Secrets

 * 1) From the area in the southwest of the map that has the three switches in the middle of it (in front of the big gate leading to 'The Beating Heart'), take the path leading to the blue skull key. Once you re-emerge into the open you will see a pillar-like structure standing in the middle of the path with the road after it splitting into two forks, one going upstairs and one downstairs. The pillar-like structure has a candle in each of its four main sides. Press against the side that has a green candle in it and follow the fork of the road that leads downstairs. A wall will have lowered, revealing a new path to your right that brings you to a megasphere. (sector 5106)

Current records
The records for the map at the Doom Speed Demo Archive are:

The (absence of) data was last verified in its entirety on June 26, 2022.

Things
This level contains the following numbers of things per skill level: